Last week, while indulging in mojitos with K and C, I was struck once more by this constant tearing our generation has to face. Blessed with infinite possibilities of studying, working, living abroad, we are a very nomad generation and we grew up with the idea that nothing matters more than new experiences and travel; not even family, friends and certainly not romance. Les voyages forment la jeunesse.
But this blessing for many of us has turned into a curse. Should I stay or should I go?- the Clash song is so applicable to us. A degree in London, an Erasmus year in Warszawa, an internship in New York, a first job in Den Haag, travels to Sri Lanka, next stop life in Goma? And I am not even a special case among my friends.
K is a talented photographer who lived everywhere around the planet, following his parents as a child, following his own path as a young man. He now works in PR in London, but cannot wait to get going. Except for that sweet girl he is seeing. C is a brilliant, elegant, edgy Italian woman who is trying to have her break into fashion and art journalism but knows it won’t happen here in London. She wants to go back to Italy. Except for that Belarusian sculptor she is dating. We talked about M who is working with that big media corporation in Dakar but is dating L who lives in France and between career and love the choice is ever difficult. And then there is Ch who is with S and it is such a perfect relationship but he wants to travel around Africa for a year and she cannot follow him because of her own professional engagements. Or G who moved from Bruxelles to Australia for a Phd when T her ex-boyfriend and forever love of her life moved back from Canada to Europe, paths brushing, never truly meeting for more than a few hours, days, months.
There are moments when these choices are obvious. You’ve got to go. You’ve got to see the world. I personally didn’t think twice when I was offered a job in The Hague in September. It was my moment, I had to seize it, whatever the consequences for my relationship. They happened to be disastrous consequences. I don’t regret it, but I know it was a choice I made, not a fatality, and that can be a burden for many. Can you always live knowing you passed on the love of your life? Is your career, your “personal development” more important than building a meaningful relationship? And when does personal development stop and selfishness begins, in the name of being part of this well-travelled, international crowd? Because at the end of the day, does volunteering in Africa really make you a better person than taking care of your own family and friends at home?
Traditional values of family, religion and local community having lost their strength, we are supposed to build our “family of choice” out of thin air and social skills. At the same time we are supposed to be strong and independent, grabbing all opportunities for travel and new “experiences”. As a result many find it difficult to know where they belong.
K, C and I were complaining about the difficulty of building a circle of truly close friends in London. I had the exact same conversation a few days later with N, F and A. The truth is I heard the complaint from friends in Paris and in The Hague as well. I heard the complaint from friends everywhere on the planet. Groups of friends are constantly being dislocated, people leaving for somewhere new and exciting. And I’m thinking: I do have quite a large circle of close friends, but it is a circle around the globe. Does that condemn me to be forever on the move, trying to see everyone? I cannot possibly choose my childhood friends over my university friends over my …
All those opportunities we are constantly bombarded with, taking us to places we would never have thought of visiting, are truly opportunities only if we know where they are leading us. But for most of us, it is only a blind jump into yet another “experience”. It’s our generation cursed blessing.
Great posts Melanie — and very tue. A very enjoyable read. Will be following your updates!
So K “is a talented photographer”, G “is a brilliant, elegant, edgy Italian woman” and so on and so forth and Ch is… nothing? Not even “a nice guy with funny hair who knows where to find a giraffe in Nairobi” or something like that? Oh well
Agreed, this can be a real problem and is a subject that often comes out in conversations among people like us.
But if I had to choose one of those words, I’d say it’s just a blessing and not a curse. Of course we end up knowing and living around many people like us, passionate about travelling and discovering and living new experiences and stuff. But actually we are a minority and for each one of us there are 10 or 100 who stay in their hometown or country and get a mortgage and live a ‘conventional’ or ‘traditional’ life with their sweetheart and close to their families and childhood friends. We just were lucky enough to have a choice and freely chose a different thing.
And we have just to realise:
- We just can’t have everything: at least at one given moment it’s either staying at a place or being on the move, it’s always either – or. This sounds stupidly tautological but can be a source of distress is one is not fully aware of it.
- Everything comes with a price: living on the move has many rewards but also a price, namely all these relationship problems, not being able to see many of your friends and never knowing which kind of electrical plug they use in this new country you are going.
Et puis voilà :-p
very, very thought provoking. truly excellent .i’m very happy to see you are doing so well. all the best
“Ch is a brilliant Spanish journalist, with the body of a god and the mind of a philosopher”. Is that good enough?
I miss hunting for giraffes with you !!!
More seriously, I was discussing this with a friend yesterday (again) and realised that it is not so much the realisation of the choice you have to make that is “the curse”. It is the addiction to making the choice. Once you’ve started travelling, moving to new countries, it is nearly impossible to stop. You know you could always be going somewhere new and you know how easy it is to go somewhere new. That’s where it becomes a curse, or rather a cursed blessing, because let’s be honest, I love it.
And it’s true, this isn’t everyone’s dilemma. But the part of the European/Western population that is concerned is growing. At our parents’ generation, almost no one was living such nomad lives.
Either way, I was just let a universal adaptor. I’m keeping it.
C’est pas le cas pour tout le monde, mais moi ca m’a l’air plutot passionant comme vie!
Ha ha, well, that’s better and you exagerated it so much that I don’t have to worry anybody would recognise me
I would more or less agree: the curse would be getting addicted to new experiences and places and so feeling bored and unmotivated after staying at one place for a long while. It’s like a drug, if you try it and like it, then you get hooked and have to go on doing it or you won’t feel satisfied.
Good idea about the universal adaptor, though
Have to say Ch’s post made me laugh out loud…
Anyway I’d say it’s not really a sign of our generation, but specifically the of well-educated middle-class members of our generation.
So I’d agree with Ch that the problem (I wouldnt call it a curse simly because it adds an inconsequential element of drama), perhaps, is that we are spoiled for choice. We are overcome by options (where to do the 2nd master’s, where to volunteer abroad, where to freelance, where to travel) and not wired in a way that we can deal with it. There have always been adventerurs, its just that the part of our generation who can afford it has so many other options as well (and the education to be able to analyse it)
Love/Friendship vs. Travel definitely strikes a chord for me. Also it’s not really something people might think about in the first instance when offered such possibilities but when adopting such nomadic lifestyle as a permanent state, it can become very difficult.
Personally, I’ve lost all sense of home, constantly shifting my “home” to my immediate surroundings. This is possibly going to get even worse with a strong desire to be available to any global opportunity, not being tied to a university anymore.
Jouy is still however where I “come from”
school years never go away.
Forgive me for trying to find a solution but:
“A sailor has a girl in every port”
I hope Sarah is not reading this haha!
It may not make for a stable, or easy, life but I don’t think many of us would change it- even if we did find all the tea in China!
On the relationship front, there are so many of us out there wanting all this adventure, these new experiences and a great career to boot that you can find someone who ‘understands’. And then, you just have to be prepared to maintain the relationship via Skype. (At least our generation has the technology!) It sometimes seems completely contradictory- and it’s something that I frequently think about with my relationship- we want to be together all the time but if we weren’t out adventuring all the time neither of us would be the person the other loves! It’s not easy though… and a two up, two down in Woking with a 9 to 5 job, a mortgage, a cat, a commute and living for the weekends might be stable, but… argh!
I wonder what’s going to happen as we start thinking about having families… I have this great idea that I’ll just keep going with a baby strapped to my back, M & I as a duo journalism act… but is that practical? Or am I going to have to have one life and then trade it in for something else? Something, dare I say it, stable.